Applicability of Baker 2018 Model to Arabic - English Translation of Palestinian Women Idioms

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not Mona Baker's (2018) approach can be used to translate Palestinian women's idioms from Arabic to English completely. Using idioms with similar meaning and form, idioms with similar meaning but dissimilar form, idioms borrowed from the source language, translation by paraphrase, translation by omission of a play on idioms, translation by omission of the entire idiom, and translation by compensation are the seven strategies for translating idioms presented by Baker (2018). The data used in this research will be collected from Arabic to English translations of Palestinian women's idioms by Palestinian licensed translators. The objectives of the current study are to examine Baker’s (2018) strategies to decide whether they can be considered as an appropriate model by its own in translating Palestinian women idioms from Arabic into English or not and to explore whether the aforementioned model needs to be adapted to fit in translating these expressions. The results of the study reveal that Baker (2018) model can be considered as a suitable and practical model in translating idioms, but it lacks the strategy of literal translation since a considerable number of the Palestinian women idioms were translated literally by the Palestinian certified translators.